1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus including lenses.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, there have been known various types of image pickup apparatuses including lenses (refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-328045, Japanese Patent No. 3566100, Domestic Re-publication of PCT International Publication No. WO2005/024508, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. 2005-167442, 2006-246193 and 2007-295141, for example).
The aforementioned patent documents Nos. 2004-328045, 3566100 and WO2005/024508 disclose image pickup apparatuses including lenses and prisms and being capable of picking-up images of plural view fields. The aforementioned patent documents Nos. 2005-167442, 2006-246193 and 2007-295141 disclose image pickup apparatuses including plural lenses and being capable of reducing thicknesses.
Further, conventionally, there has been known an image pickup apparatus including a wide angle lens and being capable of picking-up an image of panoramic image.
However, the conventional image pickup apparatus including wide angle lenses have a problem that barrel-shaped distortions occur around a picked-up image.
Therefore, conventionally, in order to overcome the aforementioned problem, there has been suggested an image pickup apparatus including a lens (a first lens) for converging light incident from its front side (a first area), a prism (a first optical-path changing member) to which light is incident at its right side (a second area), a lens (a second lens) for converging the light emitted from the prism, a prism (a second optical-path changing member) to which light is incident at its left side (a third area), and a lens (a third lens) for converging the light emitted from the prism. In such an image pickup apparatus, the three lenses are placed in a line in a horizontal direction. Further, in such an image pickup apparatus, by picking-up and synthesizing the light converged by the three lenses, it is possible to pick-up a panoramic image, while suppressing the occurrence of barrel-shaped distortions.